20th-Century American Fiction

20th-Century American Fiction

20th-Century American Fiction

Professor Arnold Weinstein explores the works of Hemingway, Fitzgerald, Faulkner, and others in this remarkable lecture series. Like no one else in the world, Americans grow up believing—or imagining—that they are masters of a destiny without constraint. How did this national ethos unleash a body of fiction dramatically different from anything that came before?

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(SET) Rise of the Novel & The Secrets of Great Mystery and Suspense Fiction

(SET) Rise of the Novel & The Secrets of Great Mystery and Suspense Fiction

Join two exceptional literature professors for in-depth looks at the enduring power of fiction and one of its most popular genres. Stories. In Rise of the Novel: Exploring History’s Greatest Early Works, dive into some of the world’s most notable early novels and learn what this literary form can tell us about human nature and our unquenchable thirst for great stories. And in The Secrets of Great Mystery and Suspense Fiction, examine the many different varieties of the genre, including classic whodunits, courtroom dramas, espionage fiction, and true-crime narratives.

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Cycles of American Political Thought

Cycles of American Political Thought

Examine a broad survey of American intellectual history in the dynamic course, The American Mind. Discover aspects of the elaborate structure that became modern America, tracing ideas in politics, religion, education, philosophy, psychology, anthropology, literature, social theory, and science—proving that Americans have a much richer intellectual tradition than generally imagined. Continue your fascinating study with Cycles of American Political Thought, as it traces the full expanse of American history, showing how the definition of what it means to be an American has changed in response to the times.

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Literary Modernism: The Struggle for Modern History

Literary Modernism: The Struggle for Modern History

Join Professor Jeffrey Perl on an intriguing reconsideration of some of the most controversial authors of the 20th century: the Literary Modernists. Just who were these authors? How did writers such as Ezra Pound and James Joyce differ from others like Gertrude Stein and William Carlos Williams? What social and political forces made them write the way they did? Literary Modernism: The Struggle for Modern History does not shrink from the challenges imposed by these questions. But it does provide you with illuminating answers that can enhance your appreciation of the literature, philosophy, politics, and morality of this seminal moment in literary history.

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